The Osage
15-03-2006, 23:13
Monhin looked with an air of disbelief at the paper in front of him.
The most ancient and esteemed body of the Nonhonzhinga, immortal and intact, subduers of the Necromancer, righteous heirs to the Empty Throne, allies of the Last Emperor, have decided in their wisdom born of a nigh infinitude of years to order the resignation of your person, the Tenth Fleet-General Monhin Dapa, due to the loss of Osage assets in Sol. An incompetance hearing will be held, and you are ordered to report to the Chamber-Fortress on...
His white eyes flared, and the paper burnt. Thrown out of his own fief thanks to the arrogance of his subordinate, the malice of a Solar coalition, and the schemes of a rampant construct. An incompentence hearing meant only one thing: execution.
And so close. So very, very close.
His fleet was some 250 strong against the nominal power of a thousand military ships and police ships outnumbering even those.
And yet... there was cause for rejoicing. Minds under his control had been seeded in Osage provinces, and a bare minority of the fleet-generals would follow his lead. The Ancestral Legions, under his handpicked Necromancer-Lords, would follow him, as would the miloliths overseen by a mind that he himself created.
The banners...he had the gun, red, two green, and the black banners under his control, and the rest were no match for the combined power these assets , the Ancestral Legions, and the miloliths presented.
So, on the ground, he had no fear.
In space.... His 250 ships were worth every three Akadan thanks to the upgrades in weaponry and armor he had worked to develop, and he had at most three other fleet-generals out of eight on his side.
The police fleets might, at best, equalize the disparity between his armada and the backwards fleets of the Nonhonzhinga, but he felt confident most of them would see which way the wind was blowing.
This is it, then. How quickly I have come to this decision. I am a fleet-general no longer. I am Monhin Dapa, Emperor of the Osage Empire, and I come to claim this right.
----
The pale, thin man in black robes moved among the dead, murmuring words as they worked over strange devices of veined black metal, periodically aiding one or the other. His staff, a worn, ancient affair that did not fit the young man's age, pulsed with a red light that seemed altogether evil in the gloom.
The Necromancer-Lord had heard the tidings. Monhin Dapa had returned from Sol, and brought with him death and a iron fist. He had claimed the Empty Throne, and immediately swung into an altogether unexpected action.
The Ancestral Legions rose at his command, swarming over loyalist territory. The miloliths had provided a hard edge to the soft, rotting flesh, and together with the strange armored men-golems that wielded cannons with their hands, Monhin's armies had met and routed the golem-and-spear affairs that the Nonhonzhinga had rustled together.
The only thing keeping his victorious armies from breaking down the Chamber itself was the mighty spells that periodically radiated from its walls, gigantic tapestries of spellwork that exceeded any power that a single fleet-general, no matter how individually powerful, could muster.
The pale, tall, thin man with the ancient staff heard all these things, and whispered spells of encouragement to his Legionaries. He knew his time was short. He was one of the fifty that commanded a million, and yet in Monhin's absence and through his complicated and ingenious shadow-work he had killed off fifteen right under the Nonhonzhinga's nose and added their flocks to his own. They wanted nothing to do with the Necromancers or their charges, and Monhin was busy in Sol.
Monhin was likely wondering why fifteen million ancestral legionaries were currently involved in the building of concentric rings of defences under a black-clouded area, but the Necromancer-Lord had sown tales and legends of a Nonhonzhinga-orchestrated takeover of some of the Legions and the building of a new fortress there among Monhin's spies, and to the Nonhonzhinga, who were caged, this was little more than another black land where the dead trod.
He had little time left. Soon enough the miloliths would come over this dead land. He was powerful, and his phagobiotic spells had had time to take root, sending the swirling wakon-currents of the organized systems that made up Life spiraling around the tall, dark spire where he lived, yet he did not know if he was strong enough yet, or skilled enough in the tomes his father had left him, to defeat this...Emperor.
He liked black. The knowledge that the only life around for miles and miles was his rising, starlike presence invigorated him. Of course, that might also have been the gigantic whirlpool of soul energy gradually draining into him.
A thin smile broke his pale, soft features. He had a name onc, but his father had erased it so that he might survive. They said he took after him, but he had never seen the man they said could make the Nonhonzhinga cower with a word.
They said he hadn't needed to fight them, because they followed his every whim.
They said that he had frustrated the man who now calling himself Emperor over and over.
They said that his first name was a black word.
Sikal his father had wanted him called, a name forged with black double meanings.
And with her dying breath, his mother, a wily if unimportant concubine, had whispered his last name.
Kasaros.
The most ancient and esteemed body of the Nonhonzhinga, immortal and intact, subduers of the Necromancer, righteous heirs to the Empty Throne, allies of the Last Emperor, have decided in their wisdom born of a nigh infinitude of years to order the resignation of your person, the Tenth Fleet-General Monhin Dapa, due to the loss of Osage assets in Sol. An incompetance hearing will be held, and you are ordered to report to the Chamber-Fortress on...
His white eyes flared, and the paper burnt. Thrown out of his own fief thanks to the arrogance of his subordinate, the malice of a Solar coalition, and the schemes of a rampant construct. An incompentence hearing meant only one thing: execution.
And so close. So very, very close.
His fleet was some 250 strong against the nominal power of a thousand military ships and police ships outnumbering even those.
And yet... there was cause for rejoicing. Minds under his control had been seeded in Osage provinces, and a bare minority of the fleet-generals would follow his lead. The Ancestral Legions, under his handpicked Necromancer-Lords, would follow him, as would the miloliths overseen by a mind that he himself created.
The banners...he had the gun, red, two green, and the black banners under his control, and the rest were no match for the combined power these assets , the Ancestral Legions, and the miloliths presented.
So, on the ground, he had no fear.
In space.... His 250 ships were worth every three Akadan thanks to the upgrades in weaponry and armor he had worked to develop, and he had at most three other fleet-generals out of eight on his side.
The police fleets might, at best, equalize the disparity between his armada and the backwards fleets of the Nonhonzhinga, but he felt confident most of them would see which way the wind was blowing.
This is it, then. How quickly I have come to this decision. I am a fleet-general no longer. I am Monhin Dapa, Emperor of the Osage Empire, and I come to claim this right.
----
The pale, thin man in black robes moved among the dead, murmuring words as they worked over strange devices of veined black metal, periodically aiding one or the other. His staff, a worn, ancient affair that did not fit the young man's age, pulsed with a red light that seemed altogether evil in the gloom.
The Necromancer-Lord had heard the tidings. Monhin Dapa had returned from Sol, and brought with him death and a iron fist. He had claimed the Empty Throne, and immediately swung into an altogether unexpected action.
The Ancestral Legions rose at his command, swarming over loyalist territory. The miloliths had provided a hard edge to the soft, rotting flesh, and together with the strange armored men-golems that wielded cannons with their hands, Monhin's armies had met and routed the golem-and-spear affairs that the Nonhonzhinga had rustled together.
The only thing keeping his victorious armies from breaking down the Chamber itself was the mighty spells that periodically radiated from its walls, gigantic tapestries of spellwork that exceeded any power that a single fleet-general, no matter how individually powerful, could muster.
The pale, tall, thin man with the ancient staff heard all these things, and whispered spells of encouragement to his Legionaries. He knew his time was short. He was one of the fifty that commanded a million, and yet in Monhin's absence and through his complicated and ingenious shadow-work he had killed off fifteen right under the Nonhonzhinga's nose and added their flocks to his own. They wanted nothing to do with the Necromancers or their charges, and Monhin was busy in Sol.
Monhin was likely wondering why fifteen million ancestral legionaries were currently involved in the building of concentric rings of defences under a black-clouded area, but the Necromancer-Lord had sown tales and legends of a Nonhonzhinga-orchestrated takeover of some of the Legions and the building of a new fortress there among Monhin's spies, and to the Nonhonzhinga, who were caged, this was little more than another black land where the dead trod.
He had little time left. Soon enough the miloliths would come over this dead land. He was powerful, and his phagobiotic spells had had time to take root, sending the swirling wakon-currents of the organized systems that made up Life spiraling around the tall, dark spire where he lived, yet he did not know if he was strong enough yet, or skilled enough in the tomes his father had left him, to defeat this...Emperor.
He liked black. The knowledge that the only life around for miles and miles was his rising, starlike presence invigorated him. Of course, that might also have been the gigantic whirlpool of soul energy gradually draining into him.
A thin smile broke his pale, soft features. He had a name onc, but his father had erased it so that he might survive. They said he took after him, but he had never seen the man they said could make the Nonhonzhinga cower with a word.
They said he hadn't needed to fight them, because they followed his every whim.
They said that he had frustrated the man who now calling himself Emperor over and over.
They said that his first name was a black word.
Sikal his father had wanted him called, a name forged with black double meanings.
And with her dying breath, his mother, a wily if unimportant concubine, had whispered his last name.
Kasaros.